A winter gift, a clear day from Drakes Head, Point Reyes National Park. The foreground is Drakes Head, the nearest water is Estero di Limantour, them Limantour Spit, Drakes Bay, Chimney Rock, the Pacific, and on the horizon far left barely visible is the Farallon Islands. What a day to have left my polarizer back at the car.
These are a couple from our first European trip, to Catalonia in 2019. I have long admired the architecture of Antoni Gaudi, and wanted to see his work directly. The Palau Guell was done while Gaudi was in his 30's, and shows a staggering level of attention to detail. The first shows one of his favorite structural details, the catenary arch, which was deployed to incredible effect in the Sagrada Familia. Briefly, a catenary arch is the somewhat elliptical shape one would see if dangling a length of chain between outstretched arms. In the inverse, it is the ideal shape for balancing the vertical load of a large structure without resorting to flying butresses.
